Welp, sooooOOooOOo I’ve been really, really busy in the last nine months year and a half and after archiving some hella old clips here back when, I haven’t updated it all, as you can see. 

I’m not doing it right this second either, but to friends: I am alive and will begin the long Philadelphia Weekly and Venuszine.com backlog update (lyme disease! the Other Tara Murtha! pitbulls! Ursula Rucker! Gawker alum overshares!) shortly, cause it’s kind of nice to have it all together. Online, anyway.

tara

because i won’t let it. never forget. A-List pick in last week’s PW:  

Bienvenue Lafayette!

Sat., March 15, 11am-noon. $5. Physick House, 321 S. Fourth St. 215.925.2251.www.philalandmarks.orgForget Hills and the O-Bomb for a moment and get down to the last greasy shard of our shameful divided past as Americans: the freedom fry. Remember that? Whether your dad likes it or not, the French totally saved our ass a while back—thanks in large part to Revolutionary War hero Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette. Bienvenue Lafayette! celebrates Lafayette’s visit to the Physick House during his 1824-’23 tour of the States (the one where he arrived broke and left loaded). Non-bigoted patriots and foodies who worship the mother sauce system alike can bring the kids to learn about French cuisine and the pleasant cascades of the parley-vous-doo language. While you’re there, take a look-see around the magnificent 30-room mansion that wine built and television saved. (Tara Murtha) 

Feature article in Venuszine this week.The Felice Brothers are SERIOUS. Dig them. Believe.  The Felice Brothers

The dangerous book for boys: fiddlin’ around with a band of brothers

By Tara Murtha
Published: March 6th, 2008 | 12:50pm

• ARTICLE TOOLS
• print
• share
• save

A roots rock revival is a-rumblin’, and it’s the Felice Brothers who are poised to inherit Americana’s crusty crown. After self-releasing a few albums and following those up with a hard-to-find, tour-only, word-of-mouth LP, The Adventures of the Felice Brothers Vol. 1, the band’s eagerly awaited U.S. label debut, The Felice Brothers, is finally set to release March 4, 2008, on Conor Oberst’s Team Love Records.

The Felice Brothers rattles with rickety, mostly joyous ballads of pistols, whiskey, and lopsided love alongside hand-clap anthems laced with dark ribbons of organ. The songs are ghosted with girls named Lucille, Odetta, Little Annie and “Ruby Mae from the cabaret.” These are primarily off-kilter ballads of love and loss that leave a taste on the teeth of rusty pipes, brass horns, and broken halos with wheezing accordion and harmonies as wayward as a bumblebee buzz. 

The three vocals-sharing, multi-instrumentalist brothers — James, Ian, and Simone, joined by dice-tossing bassist Christmas — aren’t much for crunching their concoctions through the digital mill. James says they recorded both The Adventures and The Felice Brothers on a two-track in a chicken coop.

Like all Americana singers with a certain gravelly lilt, Ian’s voice has been likened to Bob Dylan. James estimates the comparison has come up “somewhere between 10 and a billion” times so far. But I’m calling it now: it’s spot-on for Keith Richards, most eerily his cover of the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream” recorded after his infamous Toronto heroin bust in ’77.

Canadian-American rock group the Band is also liberally peppered in print around the Felice Brothers’ names, both because the brothers are from the same area in the Catskills Mountains, New York, and because of the sound: the Brothers have got the same New-Orleans-at-night brass pageantry that Allen Toussaint brought to the Band.

In the made-for-cable movie about the Felice Brothers (James votes for Treat Williams to play his part), the rags-to-riches montage goes like this: the three brothers attend church on Sundays, grow up, and split ways to do their own thing. Good family boys, they return to Mom and Dad’s every Sunday to char some meat and jam on the porch. Zoetrope-flip through the years as instruments change, 5 o’clock shadows push through, and Ian throws down the gauntlet: We’re gonna quit our jobs for music full time and do this.

The timing was ripe and there was little to lose. According to James, Ian had just broken up with a girlfriend and was living in a tent in the woods. Simon was shacking up somewhere upstate with his girlfriend, and James was living in his car and working at a taco joint. Post-gauntlet: The four boys move to a tiny apartment in Brooklyn and spend days busking in subways and howling on street corners. Somewhere along the way a Vice magazine writer “discovers” them. Next thing you know, they’re at Radio City Music Hall and touring with Bright Eyes.

James is telling all this from the back of their infamous “short bus” where the band is L.A.-bound to play the Avalon with the North Mississippi All-Stars. He’s talking about what it’s like to go from jamming on the family porch to traveling the world, playing legendary gigs like Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble. Velocity being what it is, it can be strange to perch on top of the buzz band heap.

Of the sudden interest in this little family band from the mountains, James takes the tack of similar birdmen flying close to the sun: he says they’re trying hard to not get too wrapped up in what the blogs say, especially because they’ve got a lot work to do yet.

The work right now is all about getting it right each night onstage. The boys are one month deep into an intense seven-month tour bender that zigs them all over the United States before zagging them out to Dublin, London, and Barcelona for the Primavera Festival. They’re set to hit the U.S. fest circuit big-time with appearances at Langerado, Bonnaroo, Mountain Jam, and All Points West. James says they tend to do more writing at home, where he can secure a little privacy to work through songs as dense, clear, and clever as they’ve written so far.

The closest song to a single on the new album is “Frankie’s Gun!,” a backwoods, bar-buddy anthem you expect to blast from a jukebox long after closing time on those good nights when you’re locked inside a bar instead of out. “Helen Fry” is like a waltz-y take on Tom Waits’ “Walking Spanish.”

The singsong sing-along “Take this Bread” kicks off with a recording of the Felice Brothers’ father leaving a voicemail message to the boys the last time they were on their way to the L.A.: “I was just listening to the news man, and the whole fucking California is on fire over there …. Anyway I know you’re busy. Just call when you get a chance. Let me know how you’re making out …. We love you, bye.” It’s a gruff, tender moment. It was one of the first times the boys were far away, and warning his boys of the natural disasters that lie ahead was the most a worried Dad at home could do.

They’re already learning plenty about natural disasters. James is readingWar and Peace and waxing philosophical about whiskey and women. “Love can be a beautiful thing, but it can get you into trouble,” he says.

As the brothers float farther and farther away from their safe homestead in New York, there are ever more concerts, interviews, albums, women, and whiskey on the horizon.

There are no fires in LA tonight. They are rising higher, and the world gets wider.

The Spring bridal issues are out and I’m going to rip them to shreds with betrothed friends over wine soon enough. Except for one very special article on planning destination weddings in Newport Life Magazine.Ever been to Newport? Recommended! Tons of chorizo up in the diner breakfasts.The last time I was there I dressed up all Sabrina and sipped rum punch on the sidelines of a polo match. Like a white people theme park for white people!Excerpt below, full article only in the gloss:Should I Stay Or Should I GoWritten by Tara Murtha

So you finally found the guy you can both talk to and sleep with in a reasonable ratio at the right time in your life. You’ve hop-scotched through the usual milestones: the ring is chosen, the lectures on why he needs to introduce you as his fiancée are gently delivered, and the way your friends shriek and smother you in congratulatory hugs while his high-five and yell, “bachelor party!” are duly noted. So, what are you going to do?  The moment the metal hits your knuckle, it’s the Wedding Planning Show, starring you as the decision maker who must spar well-intentioned family and friends with one arm (“We’re not sure what we want to do yet”), while jousting at home over priorities (“There’s no way I’m going into debt for one night”) with the other. It’s shocking, especially if you aren’t the type of woman who stashed wedding porn under the mattress since your 21st birthday. In wedding planning, as with men, size does indeed matter. You need to figure out how to make the most out of what you have. The Allure of the Destination Wedding There could be trouble Eyes On The Prize

… THAT’S what’s up. venuszine staff favorite 3.4.08Tara Murtha loves Rob Ryan’s Papercuts

By Tara Murtha

Published: March 4th, 2008 | 12:00am

• ARTICLE TOOLS
• print
• share
• save

Any artist that can make filigree out of a curlicue can slice into my heart anytime. Rob Ryan coaxes dazzling, beautiful art out of paper by razoring ornate, arabesque negative spaces into shapes like trees, birds, and houses. Ryan also makes screenprints from the papercut stencils and sells them through his blog and on Etsy.

The cut-outs aren’t simple mirror images like the looseleaf snowflakes we made as kids with safety scissors. Instead, my man carves poems into paper, lovely and delicate squibs that can make the hardest heartbreak open into new space. Check out the one that says “No Minute Gone Comes Ever Back Again—Take Heed and See You Do Nothing In Vain” with silhouettes of a hipster boot girl and guy rocking an afro. It’s like a 2-D Victorian Miranda July–ism in February. And pretty! Yet another reason I hope that this paperless world thing they keep talking about at work doesn’t happen anytime soon.

Tara Murtha is a Venus Zine writer.     

  The modern dance community sees Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s upcoming premieres of ”Biped” and ”EyeSpace” at the Annenberg as a rare chance to indulge in the work of a living legend. (Cunningham, an octogenarian about to graduate into the rarified world of productive nonagenarianism, still oversees production.) ”Biped” is an ensemble piece pulsating with electronic beats, while ”EyeSpace,” Cunningham’s newest creation, splinters the usual performer–to–audience dynamic by equipping audience members with an iPod (yeah, you have to give it back). Makes sense—Cunningham’s been reconstructing the space between movement and music since the 1940s, when he first collaborated with John Cage. Those who aspire to diversify their dance consumption beyond zippered up foreplay and kung–fu kicks are in for a treat. (Tara Murtha)

A-list snazzlefraggin PW 2.27.08. The O-Bomb?  » february 27, 2008 — wednesday  
Regina Lee Blaszczyk 
 

Dr. Regina Lee Blaszczyk’s new book Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture and Consumers, is a collection of essays that breaks down the way style is manufactured by what she calls the ”global fashion system” of designers, government officials, retailers and marketing mavens. One essay traces Marlboro cigarettes from being a lady’s smoke into its hypermasculine cowboy heyday. Another follows Lycra’s journey from fusty girdles to cool gym wear. During the discussion after the signing, perhaps we can figure out exactly what went down a few seasons ago when all the indie rock chicks donned fugly Urban O shrugs. Or why the girls from Manayunk roam Target every Saturday in North Face jackets and bitched–up Uggs. Maybe it’s not just lemming–like herd psychosis after all. (Tara Murtha)   

press on. 

humor essay in playphilly from august the oh-six, holmes! catching up on posting old stuff! trying to slather it all up here and rub-a-dub before it disappears into the vortex!

sorting out the whole time-space continuum issue/s, too.

linkage.

 Henry Chalfant

Tues., Feb. 19, 8pm. Free. Drexel University, 3175 JFK Blvd. 215.895.2629. www.drexel.edu

Graffiti: My parents weren’t having it when I told them how much I loved the jumbo words tied into knots spray-painted across their old neighborhood. Is graffiti the ultimate urban art brut, or gussied-up vandalism scratched by punkass wannabes? It totally depends, right? There’s your run-of-the-mill crude territorial pissing-match tags and crackhead romantic gestures, sure, but then there are also those insane, complex sociopolitical murals like in Henry Chalfant’s photos. Chalfant—author, photographer, documentarian and leading authority on hip-hop culture—will screen his legendary photographs this week at Drexel. Chalfant’s pics feature in the definitive catalogs of subway art and are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. His photo work focuses on graffiti art of N.Y.C. subway stations in the ’70s and ’80s, when the canvases for the city’s edgiest artists were literally slicing through the underground. (Tara Murtha)

Piping hot on Venuszine.com this morning.   

Tara Murtha loves someecards.com

By Tara Murtha
Published: February 11th, 2008 | 12:00am

• ARTICLE TOOLS
• print
• share
• save

Sometimes a regular e-mail doesn’t have the oomph-sha-la-la to get across what I want to say, mere words being like ill-fitting jackets for our emotions and all. But I’ll be damned if I send an e-card popping with cartoon puppies and rainbows. I might, however, need to dash off a sentiment between meetings that says “Sorry I tried to make out with you before our date even started” or something only sort of ironic like “I’d like to elevate you from a Wednesday night date to a Saturday date.”

Enter someecards.com … “when you care enough to hit send.” These cards save me the embarrassment of using my own words by letting me wrap my potentially cynical feelings in pithy sentiments already written and adorned with classy-cool illustrations. As a person with charmingly faux-reluctant sentimentality lurking behind steel walls of dignity, I’m especially drawn to the “Cry for Help” section. I’ve totally sent the “I assume I’m guilty of something” card.

Tara Murtha is a Venus Zine writer.